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aOVEIi:N^MENT CONTRACTS. 



SPEECH 



OP 



^l 



HON. HENRY L. DAWES 



OF MASSACHUSET1<S. 



jDeUvei'ed in the House of Representatives, January 13, ia62. 

■ ' ■ ■ 




"^^r..".;. .,'^^^ 



WASHINGTON, D» C. 

ECAMMELL i CO., iPRtNTERS, CORNER OF SECOND AND INDIANA AVfiNUE, THIRD FLOOR. 

1862. 



5 



SPEECH 



The House having under consideration House Bill No. 154, 
making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the 
Government for the year ending the 30th June, 1SG3, and 
additional appropriations for the year endmg 30th June, 
1862— 

Mr. DAWES said : 

Mr. Speaker : I desire to return my thanks 
to the House for affording mean opportunity to 
reply, this morning, to the speech of the gentle- 
man from New York, [Mr. Sedgwick, J'attempt- 
ed to be injected on Friday last between the lids 
of the previous question. I shall endeavor, in 
availing myself of the opportunity thus accorded 
me, fb deal as fairly and candidly with the 
House as they have with me. 

As the debate on Friday turned much on the 
report of the committee of which I am one of 
the members, though not tJie chairman, and 
not permitted to speak for the committee itself, 
yet, perhaps, I may speak for myself, and, so 
far as is proper fot me, express the views of the 
committee touching as well this matter as what 
they have conceived to be their duty under the 
commission with which they have been charged 
by the House. 

Mr. Speaker, though I have spent the best 
part of my Congressional life upon investiga- 
ting committees, no one such committee was 
ever yet raised upon my motion. No resolu- 
tion was ever yet offered by me calling for in- 
quiry, or alleging accusations that needed in- 
quiry ; no motion was ever made by me, the 
result of which has caused an investigation in 
this House. I have no taste for such employ- 
ment. And although I have felt that it was 
neither proper for me to seek nor to decline 
the service that has been thus imposed upon 
me, I have felt nevertheless, when it has come 
to me, that as well as it was in my power I 
should meet and discharge that duty without fear, 
favor, or affection. If, when, in party times that 
I have gone by, it has been my fortune or mis- 
fortune to be placed upon these committees, in 
those times when I have served in minorities — 
if in those times I have experienced less of 
mortification in the work which I have had to 
do, I have found it incumbent upon me in these 
times, when I have been placed in a majority, 
in the dischargre of a like duty, to take heed that 
I discharge that duty quite as fearlessly and 



quite as faithfully, however much mortification 
and discomfiture may Ije the result. 

Sir, I have not failed to notice- — and I be- 
lieve the committee of which I am a member 
have taken notice, in common with the whole 
country, of the fact, that for some reason or 
other- some unaccountable reason— the charges 
upon the Treasury in this time of war have 
been such as to reach nearly the bottom. 
Startling facts have come to the notice of the 
committee, and to the notice of the whole couh- 
try, touching the mode and manner of the ex- 
penditure of the public money. Some of those 
items, if the House will have patience with me, 
I propose to call their attention to in this con- 
nection ; and then to ask gentlemen the plain 
question, whether they propose to meet this 
matter at all ; and, if to meet it, how, when, 
and where? 

Mr. Speaker, the very first contract entered 
into by this Government after our troops had 
left their homes to come here, in April last, 
for the defence of this capital, byjwhich they 
were to be fed, was a contract entered into for 
cattle — not with men whose business it is to 
furnish cattle for the market; not with men 
who knew what the price of beef in the market 
was ; entered into without even telegraphing to 
know what was the price of beef in Nev/ York — 
was entered into by the Government here with 
men known about this and the othar branch of 
the Congress for the last ten years as old polit- 
ical stipendiaries — of a class of men who, in 
times past, have made what little money they 
have by such operations as buying the certifi- 
cates of members for books at a discount, and 
then drawing from the Treasury the full 
amount — and at such enormous rates, sir, that 
these men sat down after they have received 
the contract, and, in the next twenty-four hours, 
sub-let it to men in New York, who did know 
the price of beef, on such terms that, upon the 
first twenty-two hundred cattle^they put into their 
own pockets, without stirring from their chairs, 
$32,000, and the men who furrfished the twen- 
ty-two hundred head of cattle took $26,090 
more into their own pockets ; so that the con- 
tract under which these twenty-two hundred 
cattle were furnished to the army was so made 



that a profit of $58,000 over the market price 
of the beef was realized on that small number. 
A thousand head of cattle are consumed by 
the army in less time than it takes for them 
to reach the capital ; arid I ask this House, 
at that rate, to consider how long the most 
ample provisions of the Treasury would be able 
to meet simply the subsistence department of 
the army. 

Sir, poorly as the army is shod to day, a mil- 
■ lion of shoes have already been worn out, and 
a million more are already manufactured and 
in the hands of the quartermasters for delivery ; 
and yet upon every one of these shoes .there has 
been a waste of seventy-five cents — $750,000 
upon the shoes already worn out, and another 
$750,000 upon the shoes already manufac- 
tured, and not delivered, have been worse than 
wasted in that item of expenditure. 

Mr. Speaker, horse contracts have been so 
plenty that Government ofiicials have gone 
about the streets with their pockets filled with 
them, and with which they make presents to 
the clergymen of their parishes. Some of these 
contracts have served to heal old political sores, 
and cure bitter political feuds ; and the tele- 
graph announced that high public functionaries 
have graced with their pi'esence the love-feasts 
which were got up to celebrate political recon- 
ciliations thus brought about — where the hatch- 
et of political animosity is buried in the grave 
of public confidence, and the national credit is 
crucified between malefactors. We have just 
received the fruits of one of these contracts. A 
regiment of cavalry has just reached Louisville, 
one thousand strong, and a board of army offi- 
cers has condemned four hundred and eighty- 
five of the one thousand horses as utterly worth- 
less. The man who examined those horses de- 
clared, upon his oath, that there is not one of 
them worth twenty dollars. They are blind, 
spavined, ringboned, afflicted with the heaves, 
with the glanders, and with every disease that 
hor^e-flesh is heir to. Those four hundred and 
eighty-five horses cost the Government before 
they were mustered into the service $58,200, 
and it cost the Government to transport them 
from Pennsylvania to Louisville more than one 
thousand dollars more, before they were con- 
demned and cast oS". 

Mr. MALLORY. Will the gentleman per- 
mit me to. inquire from whence those horse 
were furnished? 

Mr. DAWES. It is Colonel Williams's regi- 
ment of cavalry from Pennsylvania. The horses 
were purchased in Pennsylvania, and forward- 
ed from that State to Louisville, 'and there con- 
demned. There are, sir, eighty-three regiments 
of cavalry, one thousand strong, now in or 
round about the army. It costs $250,000 to 
put one of those regiments upon its feet before 
it marches a step. Twenty millions of dollars 
have thus been expended upon these cavalry 
regiments before they left the encampments in 
which they were gathered and mustered into 



the service. They have come here and then 
some of them have been sent back to Elmira ; 
they have been sent back to Annapolis : they 
have been sent here and they have been sent 
there to spend the winter ; and many of the 
horses never sent back have been tied to posts 
and to trees within the District of Columbia, 
and there left to starve to death. A guide can 
take you around the District of Columbia to-day 
to hundreds of carcasses of horses chained to 
trees where they have pined away, gnawing 
bark and limbs till they starve and die ; and 
the Committee for the District of Columbia 
have been compelled to call for legislation here, 
to prevent the city wherein we are assembled 
from becoming a horse Golgotha. 

Why, Mr. Speaker, an ex Governor of one 
State offered to the ex-judge of another State 
$5,000 to get him permission to raise one of 
these regiments of cavalry ; and when the ex- 
judge brought back the commission the ex- 
Governor took it to his room at the hotel, while 
another co-plunderer sat at the keyhole watch- 
ing like a mastiff for his dinner. He counted 
up $40,000 profit upon the horses, $20,000 on 
the accoutrements, and like profits for the other 
details in furnishing the regiment. 

In addition to the arms now in the hands of 
the six hundred thousand soldiers in the field, 
and those purchased abroad, there are outstand- 
ing contracts to-day — made with private indi- 
viduals, and not made upon public advertise- 
ment; made with' ex-members of Congress — 
who know no more of the difference between 
arms than a mere child, with ex-brokers and 
their fathers and brothers — outstanding con- 
tracts for the manufacture of Springfield rifled 
muskets, the first one of which cannot be deliv- 
ered within six months from this day, one mil- 
lion and ninety-two thousand in number, at 20 
or 21 dollars a piece, when the Springfield armo- 
ry manufactures them to-day for $LS.50. An 
ex-member of Congress is today in Massachu- 
setts trying to get the machinery made by which 
he can manufacture, some six months hence, 
at twenty dollars a piece, the rifled Spring- 
field muskets that are manufactured to-day at 
the Springfield armory for |13.50. Before a 
single one of these muskets will have been de- 
livered, the Springfield armory will be put in 
capacity to turn out thirty thousand rifled mus- 
kets every month. The Lord, before six months 
shall have passed, will have disposed of this 
war, or He will have disposed of us. There 
will not be one of these muskets here before 
this difficulty will, in the providence of God, 
have been surmounted. I ask my friends from 
the Northwest, who expect to have a United 
States armory at Chicago, or at Rock Island, 
or Quincy, or some .other beautiful place there, 
what they will make in it if one million and 
ninety-two thousand Springfield muskets are to 
be put upon the country after this war is over, 
and at this enormous price. In addition, Mr. 
Speaker, there are outstanding contracts for 



5 



the manufacture, sometime hence, of two hun- 
dred and seventy-two thousand Enfield rifles. 

Mr. WICKLIFFE. What is the name of 
the ex-member of Congress? 

Mr. DAWES. It is unnecessary, for the 
purpose of my argument at this time, for me to 
mention names, and especially when I am 
charged by my friend from New York with de- 
siring to blacken men's names, and using my 
position upon the select committee to that end. 
I desire to bring to the attention of the House 
the enormous expenditures of the Government; 
and it does not make so much difference in 
this discussion whether A or B gets the job. 

Mr. ARNOLD. Will the gentleman from 
Massachusetts permit me to have read a letter 
from General Ripley, showing how much cheap- 
er and better arms can be made by the Gov- 
ernment than they can be furnished by these 
contractors ? 

Mr. DAWES. The gentleman can have that 
letter read when I get through. I speak by 
the figure; and I know what I am speaking on 
at this time, if I should not on'some other oc- 
casion. 

Seventy-fis'e thousand three hundred and for- 
ty-three carbines are contracted for, to be made 
by and by at $1,978,442. I have not time to 
enumerate all the contracts. While we appro- 
priated at the last se^ssion $20,000,000 for this 
purpose, $.'57,000,000 and odd have already been 
pledged, not for the purchase of arms for raen 
in the field, not to provide arms for the men 
who are fighting the battles of the country, but 
for some use upon some future occasion. Not 
only has the appropriation been exhausted, but 
$17,000,000 has been pledged. The fall of 
Sumter and the riot of 19th of April in Balti- 
more opened this drama. On the 21st of April, 
in the city of New York, there was organized a 
corps of plunderers upon the Treasury, and 
$2,000,000 was put at the discretion of a poor 
unfortunate — honest, I think — but entirely in- 
competent editor of a newspaper. He went 
straightway to purchase linen pantaloons and 
straw hats, and London porter and dried her- 
rings, and such like provisions for the army, 
including Hall's carbines, until he had used up 
$240,000 of the money, and then he got scared 
and stopped. [Laughter.] 

Mr. HOLM AN. My friend has made a slight 
mistake. He expended $390,000 instead of 
$240,000. 

Mr. DAWES. With the eye of my friend 
from New York upon me, I would rather keep 
a little under. [Laughter.] The appropriation 
for that expenditure was contained in the bills 
of -the last session, and the appropriation for 
the others I have no doubt are provided for in 
the bills already reported by the Committee of 
Ways and Means. 

There, too, is a wood contract, where a man 
has the pledge of the Government to pay him 
seven dollars a cord for all the wood that he 
•will deliver to the camps around about this 



.Jerusalem. Nevertheless, he picks up the wood 
cut down to clear the way for our dumb batte- 
ries, and he sends it to the camps in the army 
baggage wagons. He has no further trouble, 
so far as I am able to learn, than to draw his 
seven dollars a cord, and to let, the Govern- 
ment draw the wood. [Laughter.] That ap- 
propriation-will come up in one of these bills. 
If I should raise an objection, I fear I should 
be met with the imputation that I desire to 
blacken some man's character. 

Mr. Speaker, it takes $2,000,000 every day 
to support the army in the field. One hundred 
millions have been expended since we met here 
in the beginning of December, upon an army 
in repose. What they will be when that great 
day shall arrive — if it shall ever arrive — when 
our eyes shall be gladdened with the sight of 
the army in motion, I do not know. Another 
$100,000,000 will go with this, as the $100,000,- 
000 more I have here enumerated, outside of 
the daily support of the army, have gone — an- 
other $100,000,000, I say, must be added to 
this before the 4th of March. Sir, what it may 
cost to puf down this rebellion, I care very little, 
provided it may be put down ; but, sir, faitih 
without works is dead ; and I am free to confess 
that ray faith sometimes fails — my f'aitli in men, 
not in the cause. 

Sir, when the history of these times shall 
have been written, it will be somewhat doubt- 
ful upon whom the guilt will rest most heavily — ■ 
upon him who has conspired to destroy, or upon 
him who may prove incompetent to preserve, 
the institutions which have been bequeathed to 
us by our fathers. Sir, amid all these things, 
is it strange that the public Treasury trembles 
and staggers like a strong man with a great 
burden upon him ? Sir, that man beneath an 
exhausted receiver gasping for breath is not 
more helple'ss to-day than is the Treasury of 
this Government beneath the exhausting pro- 
cess to which it is subjected. The mighty mon- 
arch of the forest himself may hold at bay the 
proudest and themightiest of his foes, while the 
vile cur comes up behind him, opening his 
veins, and though he may struggle and strug- 
gle on, boldly and valiantly, the life-blood trick- 
ling from his soul, yet sooner or later his grasp 
will be unloosed, and he will faint and falter 
and die. 

Without income from youi- custom-houses, 
from your land sales, from any source whatever, 
to sustain the Treasury notes you are issuing, 
they are already beginning to fall in the mar- 
ket. Already are they sold at five per cent, 
discount at the tables of the money changers — 
six per cent, my friend near me says — and 
while we were exhibiting the singular spectacle 
here on Friday of struggling with the Commit- 
tee of Ways and Means itself in an endeavor to 
lift up and sustain the credit of the couatry, the 
sutler, that curse of the camp, was following 
the paymaster, as a shark follows a ship on its 
' voyage, and buying up for four dollars every 



five of the wages of the soldier paid in Treasu- 
ry notes. 

Now, sir, I have no desire to hasten on this 
army. I have no desire to interfere with its 
operations, or to criticise any of its movements; 
but in view of the stupendous drafts upon the 
Treasury, I have to say, the longest road has 
its turn, and the deepest well has, its bottom. 
Sixty days of the present stale of things will 
bring about a consummation. It Is impossible 
for the Trea&ury of the United States to meet 
and continue to meet this state of things sixty 
days longer ; and an ignominious peace is upon 
the country, and at our very doors, unless we 
see to it that the credit of this country is sus- 
tained, and sustained, too, by a conviction upon 
the people, going forth from this Hall, that we 
will treat as traitors not only those who are 
bold and manly enough to meet us face to face 
in the field, but also those who clandestinely 
and stealthily draw our life-blood from us in 
this mighty struggle. 

I do not, Mr, Speaker, fail to recognise the 
great duties which are incumbent upon the 
Committee of Ways and Means. They will 
not find in m.e an antagonist. They will, to 
the amount of my ability, find me contributing 
what little is in my power to aid them in carrying 
through the mighty measures they have got to 
institute to save us from utter ruin. By their 
side, if it be worth anything,' I will stand to 
aid them in all those measures ; but those mea- 
sures will fall like a dead pall upon the public 
unless before them goes this assurance, that 
these vast and extreme measures instituted to 
resuscitate and revive and replenish the Trea- 
sury are not mereiy for means to fill other and 
longer as well as the already gorged pockets of 
public plunderers. How, then, are we to con- 
tribute in this matter of reviving public confi- 
dence in our measures here, if it he not, when 
these appropriations come up, that we show a 
willingness and determination td probe them, 
that we may ascertain whether there be or be 
not in thern anything that can be spared at this 
moment ? During the last vacation, that which 
was to most of you a vacation, I felt that the 
duty imposed upon me by the Speaker was to 
do what little was in my power practically -to 
save the Treasury from further plunder. I went, 
as a committee man, to work. I travelled 
nearly six thousand miles without compensa- 
tion. I devoted myself faithfully, if not suc- 
cessfully, tp that work, in a disposition to ren- 
der myself practically useful with my colleagues 
upon that commiitee : and when we thought 
we found any matter that needed investigation, 
that there might be a practical result, v/e laid 
the matter before the Departments, and it is 
due to them to say that with one or two excep- 
tions they heartily co-operated with us ; and I 
venture to say that some little at least has been 
saved to the country through that instrument- 
ality. It was this that prompted us in the mat- 
ter now more immediately before the House. I 



regret that any gentleman should infer that it 
wag a disposition to attack a high public func- 
tionary, whose character has always been so 
high and so above reproach that no man ia 
bitter party times, or any other, has brought 
aught against him. The attempt to force this 
controversy upon the shoulders of the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury by those who are disposed 
to hurry this appropriation through, without 
further consideration of its merits, has been, 
if from any quarter, that of which the Secrettui^ 
himself has most reason to complain. The 
man is no true friend of the Secretary or of his 
reputation who insists upon charging to him, 
or to his door, whatever of complaint there 
grows out of this matter. With the distinct 
and positive declaration upon the part of every 
man who has called in question this particular 
item, that it was without fault of the Secretary 
of the Treasury, I repeat that the attempt to 
carry it in upon the shoulders of the Secretary 
is an attempt, if not intended, certainly at- 
tended with the result of making him answer 
for other people's sins. Nor am I disposed'tQ 
be driven from the position at first assumed 
upon this question. 

I am not, sir, to lose sight of the fact that 
all that was asked by the amendment offered 
by my colleague [Mr. Holman], upon the com- 
mittee, and supported by the other members of 
the committee, was to postpone so much of this 
appropriation as was necessary to fulfill that 
existing contract, and to leave the rest of it, 
if possible, to its legitimate expenditure — to 
postpone it, not to defeat it, unless, upon aa 
investig;ation by those upon whom investiga- 
tion is incumbent here, it shall prove such a 
contract as deserves to be scorned and repu- 
diated by those upon whom the just adminis- 
tration of the affairs of the Government rests* 
My colleague upon the committee said, all who 
have spoken upon this question have said, that 
such were the peculiar circumstances of this 
case, that it demanded further invea.tigation. 
My friend from New York, even, says that to 
him all is dark. The Secretary of the 
Treasury estimated in July that it would cost 
$.300,000 to execute this work. It has been 
so coutracted for that it not only has cost* 
$300,000, but $550,000. ^ Now, I say, that of 
itself requires of us, who are voting public 
money by the hundred thousands in this way, 
to ask the question, and have the question an- 
swered by somebody, before we pay this money. 
There may be the best reason in the world, and 
it is not my fault if I am not able to furnish at 
this moment, from the Secretary himselfi 
every particular pertaining to this contract, 
I have sought it diligently ever since last 
Friday. It is scarcely an hour since I left the 
Treasury building ; and I repeat, it is not my 
fault that I am not able to spread before this 
House not only the contract itself, but every- 
thing which has been done under it. I prefer, 
for one, before I vote to pay any more money, 



to know exactly where and why It is going. 

I must hurry on, and say a few words more 
nearly to the question before the House on 
Friday last, and upon which the House gave 
me permission to speak ; and that wa? the 
speech of fhe gentleman from New York, [Mr. 
Sedgwick.] I understand the gentleman from 
New York not to dispute, but that if the facts 
laid before the House are true as contained in 
the testimony of Samuel A. Hopkins, they fur- 
nish good ground for further delay and exam- 
ination of this matter. But he attempts to 
weaken that testimony, and says it is not 
worthy of credit before this House. Without 
any testimony outside of that evidence, he 
finds in the evidence itself what he claims to 
be reason enough for our discrediting it. 
Sir, look into the testimony, and say whether 
it is a probable story. The first complaint he 
makes, and which he seems to lay great stress 
upon — because he repeats it twice in his speech 
— is that this investigation proceeded upon the 
part of the committee for another purpose, to 
wit : to investigate the conduct of Wood, Com- 
missioner of Public Buildings. And tben he 
says that this man Hopkins thought he had 
some claim up^ the consideration of the Ad- 
ministration, because he was chairman of the 
committee at J ersey City to receive the presiden- 
tial train on its passage to Washington. I hope 
it is no particular tenderness for his own constit- 
uent and townsman, the self-constituted con- 
ductor of that presidential train, who travelled 
all the way from Syracuse to Springfield, Illi- 
nois, and put himself at the head of that train, 
and so gallantly conducted it through Baltimore 
even and all the way, that he secured the place 
nearest the throne as compensation for the 
valuable services he thus rendered. [Laugh- 
ter.] That was my friend's constituent and 
townsman — Mr. Wood. My friend does not 
know him now. We all turn from the setting 
to the rising sun. [Laughter.] 

Mr. SEDGWICK. I desire to say that the 
gentleman is as wide from the truth in this 
statement as he is in some others. Wood is 
not my constituent, and has not lived in 
my town for fifteen years. 

Mr. DAWES. Oh, how he has fallen! There 
was a time when he was valet de chambre, and 
then he smiled on us all, and all of us would 
have been glad to own him as our constituent 
and townsman ; now none so poor to do him 
reverence. [Laughter.] It was this gentle- 
man, once a resident of my friend's town, whom, 
he says, and repeats twice in his speech, we 
took testimony to displace, and whom we did 
displace. Hinc illce lachymoe I Is that the 
cause of all these complaints ? But the next 
thing my friend finds is a palpable contradic- 
tion in the testimony of Hopkins, to wit ; that 
he. says in the beginning, "I came on here 
with Mr. Ormsby," and then, before he gets 
through, he says " Mr. Ormsby came on a day 
or two before I did." I got here a little while 



the first. A terrible contradiction, truly I Hag 
not my friend seen such a contradiction as 
this, brought out in glaring letters, so as to as* 
tonish a judicial tribunal at i:ome cross-roads 
in his district? It is worthy of some justice's 
court at some cross-roads or some tavern. 
What if Hopkins did say that he got here a 
little while first ? Did anybody inquire of him 
whether they came together or not ? Did any- 
body inquire if they travelled in the same car, or 
care whether they did or not ? They were here 
for a common purpose. My friend turns ofif 
for a moment from his late constituent and 
townsman — not now, but formerly — and if such 
men filled the district now, I dare say quite an* 
other man would come here as its Representa- 
tive. He turns off from hira to Ormsby, and 
he says that Ormsby, when he says he is pro- 
prietor of the New York Bank Note Company, 
is a myth, and he goes on a little way further, 
and says he is an impostor. Now, upon v/hat 
authority does he say that ? What does he find 
in the testimony about it? Nothing in the 
world. He asked me if I knew him, and then 
he asked his neighbor if he knew him. I said 
I did not and his neighbor said he did not, and 
thereupon he pronounced him first a myth and 
then an impostor, because two members of 
Congress dfd not know him. Now, that is as- 
suming altogether too much. It would take a 
very large volume to contain what even a 
member of Congress does not know. [Laugh- 
ter.] 

But my friend goes on further, and refers to 
the testimony of Hopkins that there was not 
sufficient competition. He read in his testimo- 
ny that he called and ascertained "at the prop- 
er office" that circulars were sent to these two 
bank note companies. And what is the com- 
plaint about that? Why, it is that Hopkins 
did not inform us whether "the proper office" 
was the office at Willard's Hotel or not, as if 
the investigating committee even did not know 
that the proper office to obtain this information 
was uot the office at Willard's Hotel. My 
friend says that he goes upon the presumption 
that all public functionaries discharge their du- 
ties, and are honorable men, until the contrary 
is shown. So do I, and I include witnesses 
also. Unless my friend can find something be- 
sides what he has pointed out here in this ex- 
amination, why we should not put confidence, 
in this man's testimony, I presurfse with him 
that he ia a fair and honorable man. I pre- 
sume that much, at least, when he testifies to a 
transaction which will explain this strange fix 
we are in of being required to vote $250,000 
additional upon the estimate of $300,000. We 
ask that this matter may be investigated, and 
that this item shall be postponed until it can be 
made to appear to the proper accounting offi- 
cers that it is right and ju?ito pay this money. 
My friend from Vermont [Mr. Walton] offered 
an amendment, having that object in view, on 
Friday ; and if our friends on the other side of 



s 



this question had been patient enough to have 
heard him explain it, instead of attempting to 
put it dowa«as they did, they would have seen 
a disposition on the part of every man here who 
desires investigation into this item to sustain the 
Government in the prosecution cf its lawful 
and just functions — a disposition to direct the 
appropriation of this money in such a way that 
it shall reach the Secretary's office, and the 
clerks and agents connected with it; and at the 
same time give the Secretary permission, if he 
sees fit, to make a contract under his own eye 
for the further printing of these Treasury notes, 
that shall secure to the country a conviction 
that he is seeing to it that every dollar of the 
public money which goes through his hands is 
expended v/ith rigid economy and accounta- 
bility. 

I shall endeavor, Mr. Speaker, to carry out, 
in an amendment which I shall offer to the bill, 
precisely those ideas suggested by the amend- 
ment ot the gentleman from Vermont. I hope 
that the amendment will be adopted, for I un- 
derstand that a considerable portion of this 
$250,000 must necessarily go to pay the clerks 
in the Department connected with the issue of 
these Treasury notes. I desire that they shall 
have their pay, and that that bureau in the 
Treasury Department shall go on .unabridged 
in its strength and efG.ciency, and at the same 
time I ask the House to postpone for a while 
the payment of any further money into the 
hands of these engravers, not because I am sat- 
isfied beyond a doubt that they have made an 
improper contract with subordinate officers of 



the Gcwernment, but because such are the cir- 
cumstances surrounding it that it is just and 
proper that there shall be investigation. There 
has been time lor the mails to reach here from 
New York since this debate closed on Friday, 
and I have no doubt that there will come in 
here, if the previous question is not called, any 
amount of letters and certificates to back up 
this claim. I stated on Friday that I might be 
doing these men injustice, and that all 1 asked 
of the House was that the case might be made 
clear, and that time should be given. I think 
that if these men have received $300,000 alrea- 
dy for the engraving and printing of these Treas- 
ury notes, it is but fair that they wait, if any- 
body must wait, while the poor, honest labor- 
ers that have been making clothes for the army 
receive some of their pay ; and, in the meaa 
time, some tribunal — the Secretary of the 
Treasury himself, and no more just and upright 
tribunal could be found — will see to it that 
this contract was not made unadvisedly or im- 
providently. Inasmuch, however, as some part 
of this appropriation ought to be applied to 
worthy objects, I offer the following amend- 
ment to the bill : 

For the uecessai-J' expenses in carrying Into effect the act 
of mil 01" July, 1861, and the act of 5th of August, 1861, in 
addition to the appropriations made by those acts, SI 50 ,000: 
Provided, lliat no part of this appropriaiiou shall be usod 
in the i)ayment or liquidation of any sum duo on any exist- 
ing contract for engraving or printing bonds or notes. 

If that amendment shall be adopted, I pro- 
pose to offer a similar amendment touching 
the $100,000 in the next clause but one of the 
bill. 

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